Manfred Mann: blinded by the spotlight

Merrill Shindler - Rolling Stone April 1977

San Francisco - Manfred Mann has never met Bob Dylan. He's also never met Bruce Springsteen. He says he doesn't really care to meet either of those gentlemen, though much of his notoriety springs comes from their songs - Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn" over a decade ago and, most recently, Springsteen's "Blinded By The Light."

"I mean, I wouldn't mind meeting them," Mann says, "if it occurred in a natural situation. But I wouldn't want to do it in a situation where it's a big deal and sort of contrived." Which is, about as close as Mann, whose name is synonymous with his band, ever comes to shyness.

Mann's Earth Band (guitarist/ vocalist Chris Thompson, guitarist Dave Flett, bassist Colin Pattenden, drummer Chris Slade) is in San Francisco to fill out a bill between the Pousette-Dart Band and Journey. The Friday night crowd, in Bill Graham's Winterland for the roar of Journey's heavy metal, doesn't really know who the devil Manfred Mann is, outside of "Blinded By The Light." There can't be more than a spoonful of people in the hall who remember "The Mighty Quinn," and even fewer who know old Mann standards like "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," "Pretty Flamingo" and "My Name Is Jack." And that suits Mann just fine. Though these days he's tolerant (barely) of his past, not so long ago he was speaking about how embarrassed he was feeling about his bubblegum period. "Even now I feel it has got the most dreadful feel," he says. "Things like 'Ha Ha Said The Clown,' at the time I really loathed, but now it sounds like an interesting sort of pop record.

"Looking back, I think they captured the spirit of the time quite well," he continues. "But I don't think any of the singles I did were the great hits of the Sixties. I think "Quinn" was quite a good one, mind you, but the thing that everybody remembers, 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy,' if you put that next to the Beatles' singles, I don't think it stands up."

With 20 minutes remaining before he takes the band on stage, Mann is devouring everything in sight. First he works on a steam table full of cold, greasy chicken ("Don't try to shake my hand," he barks, with chicken goo dripping from his fingers). Then Bill Graham's caterer appears with plates of crudités and shish kebab, and Mann retreats to his dressing room to eat and begrudgingly answer questions between bites. He makes it clear from the outset that he doesn't like interviews - "I feel," he says between chomps on a great fistful of green onions, "it's better to be a kind of mystery."

Born Manfred Leibowitz in Johannesburg, South Africa, 36 years ago, Mann began studying piano at age six. By 19, he was practicing eight hours a day while studying music at Witwatersrand University. He left South Africa in 1961 ("because I didn't like anything about South Africa") for England, where he taught for a while before forming a jazz group with pianist/ vocalist Mike Hugg called the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers. The Brothers, based on a common mania for Charlie Mingus, lasted six months; but it formed the nucleus for Hugg and Mann's next group, the singularly plural Manfred Mann, formed in 1963. Starting with "5-4-3-2-1" in 1964, the band had 16 Top Ten hits in England and was a breeding ground for musicians like Jack Bruce (who played bass on "Pretty Flamingo") and Klaus Voorman.

Manfred Mann broke up in 1969. Mann and Hugg were growing tired of banging out a few set chords on stage and producing what they considered formularized pop hits every few months. "'Do Wah Diddy' was a cold-blooded attempt to get a hit single," says Mann, "that's all we were doing. I was playing chords and Mike was putting a rhythm down under a sound." So, with their last hit "Ragamuffin Man," still in the British Top Ten, they formed a jazz/rock band called Chapter Three.

Unfortunately, though, nobody really understood Chapter Three. "People said this is the first group in England in the mode of Blood, Sweat and Tears. That kind of brought us down. We didn't want to get anything going like that; it's just we had horns. "Chapter Three produced two albums before breaking up in 1971. It was also the end of Mann and Hugg's ten-year association: Hugg went off to write themes for the BBC; Mann formed Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

The ecological connotations were Mann's way of exorcising the demons from his "Sha-la-la" days. "I was stuck with a 1967 name ['Better than '57', British promoter-producer Jack Good once quipped.] Particularly in England, as there was such a strong association with all the things I'd done in the Sixties, it was very hard for any band I did to be accepted. Now… the years have gone by and I think people see it almost as a historical thing rather than a hangup. It's not a hangup for me-I'm quite happy.

"I just want to get onstage and play good rock music so that it's an enjoyable evening for everyone."

Mann kicked off the Earth Band with an obscure Dylan tune, "Get Yours Rocks Off," as the group's first album's title cut. Since then, over their next five albums (Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Solar Fire, The Good Earth, Nightingales and Bombers and The Roaring Silence), the Earth Band has slowly moved from Dylan ("Please Mrs. Henry") through various astral (Solar Fire) and organic phases (The Good Earth, which came with one square foot of land at Llanerchyfra in County Brecon, Wales, on every album), before finding a modicum of success with Dylan's heir apparent, Bruce Springsteen. But Mann, perverse as ever, attributes nothing whatever to his evolution from Dylan in the Sixties to Springsteen in the Seventies.

"I haven't done them [the songs] because anybody told me to," he says, gnawing on some shish kebab, "or because I read anything that led me to them or for any other reason other than the songs themselves seemed to work. I approached them (chomp, chomp) and I was drawn to particular songs."

Mann almost drops his Heineken, though, when the suggestion pops up that he's a songwriter whose biggest successes have been with other people's songs. "Sorry," he glowers, "I'm not a songwriter… I'm a musician and an arranger whose biggest success has been with other people's songs! I'm not a really good songwriter. I judge myself to e a better interpreter, a better arranger than a songwriter."

He also feels no reverence for the songwriter's intention in writing the song. Indeed he cheerfully rewrites lyrics. "Yeah, I'm quite happy to do that. I mean, if you listen to Springsteen's 'Blinded By The Light,' I've taken out words, I haven't been very honest to the original at all. I think that's quite important." For that matter, Mann's reworking of Dylan and Springsteen doesn't seem to bother him in the least. Dylan once said in Melody Maker that' "Manfred Mann… they've done three or four of my songs. Each of them has been right in context with what the song was all about."

"It have me far more pleasure to hear that than anything else." Responds Mann. "For Dylan to say we do his stuff better than anyone else really is nice. And from somebody who knows Springsteen, I gather he finds it quite interesting what we've done… I don't know whether he likes it."

After 17 years of performing - along with a film score (for Up The Junction), dozens of commercials and various stints teaching - Manfred Mann doesn't get very excited about much of anything anymore. He takes his first hit American single in a decade in stride, and has no particular plans for a follow-up. "There's no song I want to do," he says oozing detachment. "I don't think in terms of theory and ideas. People say, 'What you do, conceptual albums?' and I answer, 'No just a bunch of songs.' I feel I ought to have a guru so I can talk about some evangelical message that people feel is significant."

As Mann starts to clean off his fingers before going onstage, I ask one final question about the metaphysics of "Blinded By The Light," and the unreal elements of his first Springsteen reworking, "Spirits In The Night," scheduled to be the Earth Band's next single. As he heads for the door he tosses me the sort of look one might give a squashed bug, and with the roar of Winterland surging into the dressing room, leaves me with "I'm kind of against ever explaining things that I do. My feeling is that everybody hears it how they hear it and I let them, without explaining why, what and wherefore. The answer is really, 'It sounds good'".

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